Previous studies have shown that American Samoan immigrants who have lived in San Francisco for five or more years and who retain a traditional group-oriented coping strategy are more at risk for developing psychiatric disorder symptoms than those who have mastered a self-reliant coping strategy while maintaining some form of group orientation. The purpose of this study is to analyze the effectiveness of an 8-month long, community-based, preventive intervention program aimed at promoting community and social competence while assisting high risk individuals develop a self-reliant coping strategy. The intervention is funded by a private foundation and will involve twenty (20) trained change agents employed as educators of other community residents. Following the implementation of the program, its impact will be assessed over five time intervals by contrasting subjects who were assigned to the program (n=190) with individuals who were randomly selected to serve as a no-treatment control group (n=95). Baseline data for identification of the study group have been collected. Both experimental and control groups are very similar in terms of age, marital status, sex, socioeconomic status, migration experience, and adoption of traditional group-oriented strategy. We expect to find significant post-intervention differences in the dependent measures of psychiatric disorders (depression, anxiety, psychosocial dysfunction, general psychopathology, cognitive impairment, response to health opinion survey) used in the evaluation, in each case favoring the experimental group. Differences in the dependent measures will be explained in terms of the adoption of both group and self-reliant coping strategies with respect to the experimental group and maintenance of a single strategy (group oriented) with respect to the control group.